Handy hint: use lip balm on boo-boos

(If you like, we can pretend this is a life hack, and it’ll make us both feel more hip.)

Today’s useful tip is that you can use chapstick on hangnails and other minor hurts to soften them up and help them heal. I use Burt’s Bees Beeswax Lip Balm on everything from insect bites I can’t stop picking at to — tonight, specifically — a blister on my heel that keeps cracking and getting deeper instead of healing up.

The best lip balm is any that contains allantoin, a cell proliferant which helps small injuries actually repair themselves. Sometimes — as in the Burt’s Bees ingredient list — it’s also listed as an extract of comfrey. In Australia, one brand that contains allantoin is “Bonne Belle” — the stuff in the blue tube — but it tastes kind of like vaseline, which I don’t like. The Burt’s Bees one is pepperminty!

The best thing about using lip balm on booboos is that I always have it in my pocket. I’m not one of those chicks who carries round a bottle of hand lotion in her purse, but a tin about the size of a 50c piece I can usually manage.